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helm t1_ixpgf32 wrote

Reply to comment by cballowe in Mercedes-Benz to introduce acceleration subscription fee by kishiki18_91

Yes, but it's clear that your examples involve a negotiation in which the supplier is trying to more effectively match the buyer's needs.

This is all about building one car for everyone, but locking parts of it down with software. This reduces production costs. The value for the customer would be to upgrade/downgrade features at will. But so far, car makers haven't sold it very well, I think.

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cballowe t1_ixphb2y wrote

I think the "car makers haven't sold it very well" is more of the issue than building one physical model and enabling/disabling bits with software to meet customer needs.

I don't need a <5 second 0-60, so the option to not pay for it makes sense. There's definitely some people who would pay for it. With gas motors you get the difference between the base model and the performance model, with electric - it's software and not a bigger motor. Seems fine to me. you need to have that base model spec available.

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